UN chief calls for new climate pact push

Yahoo News 22 Dec 09;

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon appealed for world powers to make a new effort to secure a legally binding climate deal next year amid new diplomatic wrangling over the failure of the Copenhagen summit.

China hit back at Britain over claims that Beijing had "hijacked" the Copenhagen negotiations while Brazil and Cuba lashed out at the US President Barack Obama.

With scientists warning of the growing threat of drought, floods, storms and rising sea levels, Ban acknowledged international disappointment over the summit accord on restraining rising temperatures.

"I am aware that the outcome of the Copenhagen conference, including the Copenhagen Accord, did not go as far as many would have hoped," Ban told reporters in New York.

"Nonetheless they represent a beginning, an essential beginning," the secretary general added.

Ban said "the leaders were united in purpose, but they were not united in action," and pressed them "to directly engage in achieving a global legally binding climate change treaty in 2010."

The UN boss said he would set up a high-level panel on development and climate change in 2010 ahead of attempts for a new deal at a summit in Mexico City in December next year.

The leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and major European nations assembled the last-minute Copenhagen accord, as it became clear the 194-nation summit was heading for failure.

They promised 100 billion dollars for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout and set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The outcome has been widely criticised, with recriminations among many of the participants.

China on Tuesday accused Britain of "fomenting discord" among developing countries after Britain's climate change minister Ed Miliband said China had blocked a deal in Copenhagen.

Miliband wrote in a newspaper article that China vetoed attempts to give legal force to the accord reached at the summit and that it had blocked an agreement on reductions in global emissions.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said "such an attack was made in order to shirk the obligations of developed countries to their developing counterparts and foment discord among developing countries."

She told the state Xinhua news agency "the attempt was doomed to fail."

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva blamed the United States for the talks' failure, saying Obama was not prepared to make sufficient emissions cuts.

"The United States is proposing a reduction of four percent from the date fixed by the Kyoto Protocol (1990). That is too little," Lula said on his weekly radio programme.

This led other countries to avoid their "commitments to the objectives (of reducing carbon dioxide emissions) and financial commitments," Lula added.

Brazil pledged voluntary carbon emission cuts of 36-39 percent based on projected 2020 output and urged rich countries to help poorer countries.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez accused Obama of being "arrogant" at the summit, while Britain had been the "executioner" for the United States.

"During the summit, there was just an imperial, arrogant Obama who doesn't listen, who imposes and threatens developing countries," the minister told a press conference.

Rodriguez added that "the British delegation played the role of the executioner" using attempts at "shameful blackmail" against developing countries.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday accused a handful of unnamed countries of taking the summit hostage.

India weighed into the dispute with its government hailing the lack of targets and legally binding measures and vaunting the united front presented with China, Brazil and South Africa.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told parliament India had "come out quite well in Copenhagen".

He listed a series of accomplishments, including the thwarting of moves to impose binding targets for global reductions in carbon emissions -- something India has always rejected.

"We can be satisfied that we were able to get our way on this issue," Ramesh told lawmakers.

Bangladesh, one of the nations most vulnerable to global warming, said meanwhile that it will seek 15 percent of the first 30 billion dollars committed at the Copenhagen summit.

EU seeks way ahead after 'disastrous' UN climate talks
Yahoo News 22 Dec 09;

BRUSSELS (AFP) – European environment ministers began Tuesday to plan a new strategy for tackling climate change after "disastrous" UN climate negotiations which the US and China did their best to undermine, the Swedish EU presidency said.

"I call this a disaster, it doesn't at all match the needs of the world and that is what we have to discuss," said Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of the year.

The outcome of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, which ended last Friday "was mostly for the big ones, for the US and for China and their followers" agreeing on "the lowest common denominator," he told reporters as he arrived for the talks in Brussels.

The Copenhagen agreement was put together by leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and major European nations, after it became clear the 194-nation summit was in danger of failure.

It promised 100 billion dollars for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout and set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The summit outcome has been widely criticised, however, with recriminations among many of the participants.

Belgian Climate Minister Paul Magnette is one of the Europeans seeking a stronger EU line, and sees a kind of climate tax as a possible answer.

"If some countries, including the biggest emitters in the world, continue to block the adoption of binding emission reduction targets, the European Union has to consider... a carbon tax on products imported from these countries," he told the Belgian daily Le Soir Monday.

Otherwise, he added, companies operating in Europe, which has set binding CO2 cuts of 20 percent by 2020, would be at a disadvantage.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also said that such a carbon tax is worth considering.

However, the idea does not have unanimous EU backing.

"We can't reach our goals through state edicts," German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said on Tuesday.

The European Commission is also reticent. "The carbon tax is not a subject for discussion" at the EU ministerial talks, an official said.

No decisions were expected on Tuesday, but the post-Copenhagen debate was underway in Europe.

"The governments are in the process of analysing and leading the debate," one negotiator said, while adding that the next major talks would take place in Seville on January 15-16 after Spain assumes the EU presidency.

Roettgen was not despairing. "This isn't lost," he said.